Ruslan Medzhitov

Who is Ruslan Medzhitov?

Ruslan M. Medzhitov, Ph.D., the David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, a member of Yale Cancer Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. His research focuses on the analysis of innate immune system, inflammatory response, innate control of the adaptive immunity, and host-pathogen interactions.

Professor Medzhitov was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and earned a B.S. at Tashkent State University before going on to pursue a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Moscow State University. Before coming to Yale, he was a fellow in the laboratory of Russell Doolittle, Ph.D., at the University of California San Diego. His postdoctoral training was with the late Dr. Charles Janeway Jr. at Yale University School of Medicine from 1994 to 1999.

In 2000, Ruslan Medzhitov was selected as a Searle Scholar. His scientific contributions have been recognized with several awards, including the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute, A Master of Arts Privatum at Yale University, The Emil von Behring Award, AAI -BD Biosciences Investigator Award, A Doctor Honoris Causae at the University of Munich, the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists from the New York Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Howard Taylor Ricketts Award from the University of Chicago and Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research in 2010. The same year, in recognition of his prolific contributions to the field of immunological research, professor Medzhitov has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the elite corps of researchers from the nation’s top scientific institutions and in 2011 he was a co-recipient of the prestigious Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine.